The mobile app market is thriving with new apps and app updates, making their presence regular. Among the thousands of apps published across Android and iOS stores, only a handful have become successful. The vast majority of apps just become forgotten and fail to survive as a business. It is important to develop a mobile app that sustains the competition instead of just releasing an app.
Do you want to know how to build an app that continues to grow as a business? Here we are going to explain some time-tested principles and tips for building a sustainable app.
IMAGE CREDIT: Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash
Consider Standing Apart from the Competition
Every particular app category and niche represents thousands of apps, and many are available free of cost. Why then will your target users opt for your app and not others in competition?
This means you first need to create a value proposition that makes the app stand out from the competition. Your app either needs to offer a unique solution or a better user experience with the same solution.
Solve a Relevant Problem
It is unreasonable to publish another app that doesn’t offer any unique value than all the apps already addressing the same problem. So, you need to know what issues and shortcomings the users of other competitor apps are facing. Accordingly, you can come up with solutions up to the user’s expectations.
Your app should offer a solution to the users’ relevant problem, and the solution through ease of use and effectiveness should stand apart from the competitors.
Just Offering it Free doesn’t Guarantee Success
If you have an impression that you have more chances to gain traction by offering a free app, I suppose you might be wrong. Millions of free apps across Android and iOS platforms do not have enough audience engagement to run as a business.
On the other hand, even a premium app from a new app publisher can rise to huge success simply because of the unique value it offers. So, in respect of monetization, you need to adhere to the practices and benchmarks followed by other competitor apps.
Targeting the Right Audience
The most important success principle is targeting the right audience who are most likely to find your app useful. You can have an awful idea about the target audience from the competitor apps. But you need to go deeper and find the audience looking for the valuable “extra” your app is offering.
Please go through the reviews of all your competitor apps, study the stats and insights, go to several discussion forums and chat groups where users freely give their opinions, and ask the industry influencers. You can also carry out a poll or survey on social media.
Determine the App Features
It is quite likely that you brainstormed the app idea at length and considered what it could do. There are certain common features, such as notifications, social sharing, mobile payments, and third-party integrations, that are irreplaceable. But these are not elementary features to define the value proposition of your app.
Just focus on the core app idea and the feature that represents this app idea best. Many features may seem lucrative, but usually, too many features end up harming the user experience. It is the ease of use and smooth user engagement that matter most for an app product.
It is always advisable to opt for incremental development by prioritizing the core features for the initial version followed by value additions in the subsequent updates. This approach helps you build the app over time based on user feedback.
Opt for the Right Technology and Platform
The way a mobile app is developed is crucial for how an app works, and this is why choosing the right technology and platform is important. You can either build a native app for separate platforms, cross-platform native apps, or hybrid apps.
Native apps built for specific mobile platforms such as iOS or Android need to be coded with a programming language suitable for the particular platform. For example, native iOS apps using Swift, Objective C, and Xcode, and Native Android apps use Java or Kotlin. A native app by leveraging the features and functionalities of the device hardware and platform ensures a superior user experience.
Cross-platform apps using the shared SDKs and a portion of platform-specific code can develop apps that can run on both platforms while offering a native UI layer and user experience. This approach ensures cost-effective development with a shared Codebase while still offering a native user experience. React Native, Flutter, and Kotlin Multiplatform are three leading technologies for cross-platform development.
The hybrid app is built to run on multiple devices and operating system platforms. It is cost-effective because one builds a single app for all platforms, but it lacks a native user experience. Hybrid apps are built using mainly web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JavaScript frameworks.
Conclusion
Publishing and releasing the app is just the first step in the long and strenuous pathway to sustainable app success. Long before your app is released, you need to create user expectations and buzz around the forthcoming app. Apart from setting user expectations, the rigorous pre-launch campaign will also help you get a lot of valuable feedback that you can incorporate through the development.
Since the app is getting extremely competitive, it is always advisable to take measured steps and build it over time through several incremental steps. All the tips mentioned above have been tested and tried successfully by other apps that enjoy sustainable growth.
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